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Funny thing was, as I sat bleeding off road buzz in contemplation of a Ballast Point Unfiltered Sculpin, I realized I had managed to completely and successfully ignore just how hamburgered my throttle hand was after yesterday’s little encounter with an incensed gravity.

As I stretched my stiffening hand and fingers, I realized this was going to take more than a few days to be 100% again.

I’m not sure it’s really right yet.

After a nice ribeye and a dessert grade Imperial Chocolate Stout, I went back to my hotel and slept the sleep of the righteous.

***

The week at work was one of total focus and absorption. A team of people normally spread from Massachusetts through Maryland to the Carolinas had gathered in one place to complete the launch of a Services product, and that meant taking a range of collateral — from Service Descriptions through Statements of Work to cost models — and crawling through them basically line-by-line, word-by-word, and number-by-number to make sure everything was consistent and reflected everything we knew and had learned.

It was right up there — from a thrills perspective — with watching paint dry, but it was necessary work that would serve to keep us all gainfully employed selling and delivering our most demanded service for the next couple of years. It was hard, draining, but we’d all feel good about when it was complete.

In the evenings, I spent time studying maps, looking for a possible place to stay out in Asheville, and looking at the data coming in from weather.com. Given the location of the Top Secret MotoGiro lunch stop, I could stay in Asheville Friday night, and count on a nice hour ride out Saturday morning to meet the Tiddler Pilots. A few hours of photos, interviews and general bench racing would free me up mid afternoon to head back up the Blue Ridge towards home, a night in my own bed, and a Sunday free of the scourge of the Doghoused Mothersdayless MotoGiro jockeys. It sounded perfect.

Only it wasn’t.

By Wednesday night, it was clear that Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating, and frankly, She Looked Pissed.

Most of my life seems to have morphed into one big exercise in trend identification and analysis.

Thursday night’s Mother Nature trend line was not in the desired direction. The weekend was heading towards one of those “has anybody seen Noah?” events with Friday afternoon, overnight and into most of Saturday looking particularly dire. Deep in the forecast’s fine print was the remote possibility of rain rates that would make it possible to go surfing in the Mountains of Southern Virginia.

If I stuck with the plan, I was looking at spectating and trying to do interviews in what looked like it was going to be steady, steady rain, and then riding 400 miles home in more rain afterwards. Now I’d like to think I have as much character and perseverance as the next rider, but that doesn’t mean I seek out pain on purpose.

Picking one’s battles is one reason I’m still here, eh?

Much as I didn’t like it, the smart money was on bagging the Giro, and heading for the only possible break in the weather over the next three days.

Maybe next year, oh moto nostra.

Given the prevailing weather patterns on the Blue Ridge, we were looking at a pretty standard pattern — low pressure line coming from southwest to northeast — basically following the ridge line of the mountains from North Carolina all the way up into Pennsylvania.

If I could get out early Friday morning, I’d be out in front of the weather for 4-5 hours, and when it finally caught me I’d be most of the way home. Anything other than this gap, and I was going to get clobbered.

With a little luck, I could perhaps hit the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few miles before things turned completely dire. I’d been up there in weirder weather — one freak April snow squall up on Mount Mitchell comes readily to mind.

With work wrapped up, I got my gear repacked, and turned in early.

I wanted to get a good start on the day.

***

Standing in the parking lot the next morning, I put the contents of my seat bag inside a trash can liner, and then tightened the packing straps that keep the duffel firmly in place up against the backrest on the passenger seat.

It was a little grey out, but very temperate — low 70s. Warm enough to run my ‘Stich with no layers underneath. I pulled on my Shoei and elkskins, fired the engine and waited 10 seconds or so until it assumed a steady four cylinder drone of an idle. I kicked the bike forward off the main stand and trolled out of the parking lot and back towards the highway back through and then out of Charlotte.

***

Back out on the Charlotte Beltway, things were congested, but moving. I picked up I-77 and headed north into town.

Just as I cleared downtown Charlotte, and when, in a morning rush, I’d expect traffic to lighten up — I mean, everybody should be heading into the city, right? — traffic, well, didn’t. Lighten up.

It got increasingly congested, it slowed, and then it stopped.

And stayed stopped.

Now a K1200LT is a marvelous motorcycle. Comfortable and assured at 80 miles an hour for days at a time.

But the truth must always rule, and the truth is that a K1200LT is just a little less marvelous in crawling, stop and go traffic. 850+ pounds of agility it is not, when working the clutch and starting and stopping over and over again.

It’s really not the way you want to start a long day in the saddle — managing that mass, working the bars, the clutch — you can work yourself tired and sore pretty quickly if the situation doesn’t quickly let up.

Which of course it didn’t.

It was kinda muggy. It was sprinkling lightly off and on. The LT’s cooling fans were cycling on and off while stopped, which wasn’t helping me any. I was starting to get a little overheated.

I kept thinking I’d come round a bend, or over a hilltop, and I’d see the accident that had many thousands of us trapped out here on this roadway.

And then I’d come round that bend to just some more of this.

Hope was created and then dashed, again and again. 5 miles, 10 miles, the interchange with the top side of the Charlotte Beltway I-485, which brought more sufferers into the fold. 15 miles, 18 … I was already considering making some form of shoulder run for it — more than a few SUV driver desperate fellow members of the traffic stream had already cracked and gone for it. It was just getting to the point of utter desperation and insanity when the State of Norf Carolina thought it would be nice to let us motorists know what the bleep was going on.

Mental math – Mile marker 38? That was nearly 4 more miles of this crap.

So here we were, essentially paralyzing traffic in a major American City, where somebody thought it was a good idea to reduce a major interstate to a single lane during the peak Friday daytime travel hours for some bit of optional highway maintenance.

I probably was no longer capable, after 20+ miles of walking speed LT wrestling, of completely dispassionate thought.

The bit of maintenance, it turned out, was the installation of one of those cool, cantilevered overhead interstate highway signs. If they’d been really feeling truthful, that big green sign could have said, “Warning. Doofuses Creating Backup all the way into Downtown Charlotte.”

The work crew, such as it was, was one guy working a crane with the sign rigged up to it, and about 2 dozen more guys walking around, looking at the ground and kicking rocks with their workboots.

I’m afraid I was less than charitable in my appraisal of their work.

I’m not afraid to share than most of my fellow motorists were way less charitable and way more vocal than me.

***

When I finally got around the North Carolina DOT Work Crew, the relief I experienced upon actually getting into third gear and some moving air was almost orgasmic.

The temperature gauge on the LT dropped back though nominal to cool, and I managed to stretch a lot of the tension and stress back out of my shoulders. I took a brief stop for some hydration and to pull on a light technical fleece underlayer as the temps continued to drop. There was still a fair amount of congestion that kept me in fourth gear and below full cruise through Statesville, Williamsburg and on into Hamptonville, where conditions finally permitted LT-nominal cruise and I began to fall into my customary road rhythm.

I looked down at the LT’s dashboard clock.

We were already afternoon. I’d consumed three plus hours with only 80 or so miles to show for it.

That jump on the weather that I’d been counting on had been completely squandered. I’d lost my lead on the incoming front and things were about to take a turn for the more interesting.

***

As one runs I-77 out of Charlotte, the road enters wide open rural country where — as the road comes back up the Blue Ridge — speed can rise and one climbs grade after grade towards the ridgeline.

As we climbed in altitude, it got a little greyer, a little cooler, and a little moister. It still wasn’t raining but things were starting to feel classically English outside. Looking up to the peaks, I could see some scenic mist wrapping around the mountain tops. The inner workings of the Old Hippy Brain began serving up the melody of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Misty Mountain Hop’.

As I started working my way up the last few thousand feet towards the ridgeline, the truck climbing lanes and the associated overhead lane control signage began to appear.

“Areas of Fog Ahead. Speed Limits Reduced for Safety.”

I’ll admit that years of motorcycling have made my critical thinking and analytical processes somewhat closed to outside suggestions — self-sufficiency is, at least in my way of thinking, an essential rider’s trait.

“OK,” I thought, “If I have visibility problems, I’d slow down anyway. How bad could it possibly be?”

This would prove to be another one of those karmic queries that never should have been allowed to take shape in my synapses.

The crisp sunny blast down the mountainside that had marked my ride down to Charlotte began to retreat further and further in memory the further up the mountain I went.

Three miles past the warning the first actual fog began to appear.

“OK,” I thought, ” Maybe there might be some reason for these warnings.”

Five miles further up the road the fog began to really increase. We had left 80 mile an hour visibility country and traded it for 50 mile an hour visibility.

The last 1000 feet of the climb went completely critical.

As I approached the exit for Fancy Gap, Virginia, and the exit for the Blue Ridge Parkway, visibility dropped to essentially nothing.

My personal melting pot of All-American Heredity does feature a fair bit of Irish, so I come by a pretty reasonable helping of stubborn honestly.

“Goddammit,” I thought, “First I have to skip my original reason to ride down here. I’ll be snorked if I’m going to miss a chance to do some BRP miles, too.”

Fancy Gap, if my mental map is working, is the second highest point on the BRP after Mount Mitchell. Though it might be foggy up here, three or four hundred feet of elevation drop should be enough to take us back down out of Cloud Central and back to Misty Mountain Hop.

It was a good theory, but reality had another idea.

I dropped down a few gears and took the ramp for Fancy Gap.

When I got to the end of the ramp, it was another opportunity for reassessment.

Looking around me, it was as close to absolutely zero visibility as I’ve ever not seen. Virginia 775 is a tertiary road, which the state had widened to include a median at the interstate interchange. Sitting about 15 feet from my position at the stop sign was a brand new white Chevrolet sedan. It was sitting in the middle of the state highway, stopped. Its occupants appeared to be nearly frantic — either from the utter lack of visibility or because of complete inability to make out the signage at the interchange.

This wasn’t what I’d in any way expected. I knew from my pre-ride map review that the Parkway entrance was about three and a half miles from the Interchange. I couldn’t imagine riding a mile in this stuff much less three. It was the classic ‘can’t see your hand in front of your face’ thaang.

I’d had an experience with these kind of conditions once before in my riding life, up on the Palisades Parkway outside of New York City, late at night on a visit to my mom’s place. The disorientation and fear of feeling one’s way along — knowing you were likely invisible to anyone else unlucky enough to be driving out here — was as scared as I’ve ever been on a motorcycle.

I wasn’t looking for a replay of that.

Keeping a watchful eye on the paralyzed Chevrolet, I crept across the median, got back on the onramp, and re-entered I-77, and worked my way back down the other side of the mountain.

***

I guess it pays to be flexible.

Conditions — especially on a long ride — are seldom what you want them to be. They just are what they are. Knowing when to listen to the messages from the universe and adapt accordingly keeps up my unbroken record of successful returns, under my own power, to the garage in Jefferson.

Still, heading down the mountain and out of the fog didn’t feel like a victory. Between the horrific traffic back up of this morning and this Blue Ridge abort forced by the weather the overall emotional trend was not in the ordinal direction of ascend and enlighten.

“Well, let’s gas it, and see what we can see.”

***

A short run down the mountain brings you back to I-81, and its turn to the northeast, running just west of and following the Blue Ridge. As the temperatures continued their drop from the 70s, where we’d started the day, into the high 50s, I kept the big brick on the boil and decompressed into making miles.

I came back out of the time stream to see more than 200 miles on this tank of fuel, so I landed in Christianburg for a Bad For Me Burger and a Good For Beemer Tank of High Test.

I changed into a pair of weatherproof gloves after fueling, and as I left the station the sprinkles finally turned to a light but steady rain.

I hoped I gotten my ‘Stich fastened properly, and that we had everything buttoned down. I was pretty sure that dry was not something I was going to see for quite a while.

***

After running a few more miles up 81, I began to see the strangest signage.

“Motorcycle Detour Ahead”

“All Motorcycles Must Exit – 10 miles”

“Motorcycle Detour — All Motorcycles Must Leave Interstate”

Now I’ve been doing this driving and riding motorcycles thing for quite some time, and I can ever recall seeing a conditional detour like this, where some users of the road – ME! – were getting selectively discriminated against.

I couldn’t really imagine a set of highway construction conditions that I, personally, couldn’t adapt to.

After my little run in with the Ontario Department of Highways where they’d elected to completely remove about 65 miles of the TransCanada Highway I needed to ride on — leaving me with packed soil and mud for use with my 1000 pounds of highway missile and gear — I was having a hard time imagining that VDOT could come remotely close to even equaling that, much less beating it.

I was confident of my skills and machine control, and whatever it was — abraded, graded, not-yet-paved surfaces, uneven lane levels, parallel seams — I was sure I could ride on it, and safely.

But the Detour signs kept getting closer and closer together, the verbiage more and more insistent, and at a certain point the “Honest, Officer, I am a duly trained and licensed professional” speech was likely to end just as badly as one of Hunter S. Thompson’s offramp soliloquys. This really wasn’t a conversation with the constable that I felt like having right about now. The Ride Luck Count was 0-2, and didn’t like my odds of breaking the streak.

***

So when the last “You There, Motorcycle! Exit Here!” sign came up, I meekly complied.

The Motorcycle Detour immediately took me onto some very rural secondary roads — filled with working farms, fields and barns that felt very much like the ones I’d left at home. Despite the light rain and the mist, I was warm, dry and comfortable, and there was no denying that the greenness and the mist I was riding through was beautiful.

Not every peak ride experience requires a perfect sunny day.

It was almost as if the designers of the Motorcycle Detour had intended to actually do their motorcyclists a kind of favor, to provide a peak rider’s experience.

And on a better weather day, they would have totally succeeded.

As I kept gaining altitude running Virginia Route 43, the fog began to creep back in. I saw a roadside sign indicating “Blue Ridge Parkway Ahead”.

Was it possible that the same universe that had been consistently taking had decided to lighten up and give one back?

***

The Universe was definitely giving one, but it sure wasn’t giving one back.

As I got close to the ridgeline, 43 tightens up … a lot. As one approaches the summit the road goes completely drunk-snake — there is switchback after switchback, and crazy banked decreasing radius stuff with big steep grade changes coming out of them. On a sunny day with Finn’s Buell Blast — with its Pirelli Diablos in scooter sizes — you could drag your earlobes out here and be laughing like a maniac all day long.

But today it looked slippery, and treacherous, and like one mistake away from chucking this beast of a roadbike down.

Don’t misunderstand me. My Avon Storms are the best wet weather tires I’ve ever seen. But on this chilly, wet misty day, up alone on that steep twisty mountain, the voice that does self preservation was yelling at the top of its lungs. I don’t scare easily but the feeling that one might have made a bad choice does a lot to induce a strong sense of restraint.

Upon cresting the summit, and entering The Parkway, the roadbed at least, takes on the more widely radiused curves that are this ride’s signature.

With some visibility and sightlines, and the ability to read a few corners ahead, the BRP can be run in the wet with a fair degree of assurance.

Only we didn’t have some visibility.

The Parkway runs just below the ridgeline on the eastern or shaded side of the Ridge. And while visibility was not as bad as it had been in Fancy Gap, it was certainly nothing to write home about.

Sections that I’d normally ride — averaging a few miles per hour above the Parkway’s recommended speed — felt downright uncomfortable at 20 to 25 miles an hour — there was limited ability to see to set up for curves ahead, and in the worst spots even the centerline was tough on which to stay oriented.

Fog is evil stuff — it takes away my entire sense of cyclist’s orientation in the environment, and leaves me wobbly and robbed of a sense of strategy in the ride.

Hazardous though it was, it was starkly beautiful. With no guardrails off the Northbound Parkway’s outer side, only the occasional mature pine treetop at the rider’ eye level punching out of the fog gave any hint to the steepness of the land as it dropped away from the road.

Were one to miss the inside of a corner, on a day like this, it would be a likely long time before anyone would find you or come to your aid.

***

So I took it as easy as I could, tried to relax, and tried to be sustained by the stark beauty of these surroundings. I knew as long as I remained upright, and kept a steady pace down the road, I’d eventually be presented with either improved conditions or options to get down off this mountain.

But 20 mph second gear touring is really not relaxing on a motorcycle this big. It really isn’t a natural thing for a K12 to do.

I really don’t know for how many miles or for how much time I rode this way. It might have been 10 and at may have been 50 — I just lost, with my spatial orientation, all sense of time.

But finally the Parkway descended some, and the roadway dipped beneath the altitude of the worst weather.

I could see two or three curves ahead, and was finally able to shift up a gear and sometime two, and to ride this road like a motorcycle again. The Storms felt planted, without a wiggle or slip under throttle or any sense of anxiety with the bike leaned up on the tire’s edge.

I started to rack up easy, gentle miles again, drinking in the greenness of the steady rain and the ribbon of macadam that split it.

It felt good to be able to breathe again, to relax and just ride, just ride.

***

A few miles up the road, I exited a corner to see two riders on matching black Road Glides beating together in my direction. They looked like men who were owning their bad, rolling leathery big slow shiny and heavy with little attention wasted on me. With shorty windshields, sunglasses and half helmets they weren’t really equipped for the weather ahead. I tried to flag them in the brief seconds I had, thinking they’d want to know about the foul conditions but they didn’t so much as turn a head to acknowledge me as they rumbled by.

I thought a lot about those guys in the next little while.

***

After rolling a solid 50 or so good twisting misting miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the rain, I decided to head back down the hill to the Interstate, and to set up for the blast that would take me home.

As I rode back down the ridge back to 81, the rain started to pick up in intensity. On the more modern roadway, the bike was just eating this all up, planted and stable and enhancing my confidence. It’s amazing the effect the attitude of a rider can have on his or her progress down the road.

Being out in front of events always feels better than being a half beat behind, timid and chasing one’s tail.

***

As I made miles up 81, conditions went from poor, to genuinely bad, to something way worse than that. It’s on days like this that one can really appreciate two things.

First, it’s extraordinary just how good a foul-weather motorcycle a K1200LT really is. Apart from the performance, protection and tunability of the bike’s aerodynamics, the combination of weight low in the frame, zero torque reaction and torque steer, the tractable power delivery of the engine, and a set of state of the art all weather radial tires creates a motorcycle that never sets a wheel out of place, even at elevated speeds, even with wacky rainfall rates and standing water conditions that will have four wheelers and even their 18 wheeler cousins pulling off and looking for cover.

The second thing is just how good a piece of engineered riding gear today’s one piece Aerostich Roadcrafter riding suit really is.

I’ve owned three Roadcrafters since 1985.

The first one was a gift from Sweet Doris from Baltimore, when we were still dating.

She’d decided she really dug me, in a permanent and indelible way, and if I was going to motorcycle — and she wasn’t the kind of woman who would try to talk/pressure me out of it — she figgured I’d better have the best safety gear that love and money could buy.

I never succeeded in wearing any of my Roadcrafters out. I tried. I really did. The first one was worn back in the day when having a job meant riding to it every day, and that suit was on my back no less than 220 commuting days a year, over an 11 year period, in heat, cold, rain and even limited amounts of snow. They also went sportriding on weekends, and travelling on vacations, but who’s counting? All of my suits are still in one piece and serviceable, although in various states of street credible to absolutely vile patina.

It’s just that life took a guy who was 135 1985 pounds and converted him into a guy who is 201 2017 pounds.

Whatcha gonna do?

I run into a lot of rain riding around Maryland in the summer. Heavy rain or thunderstorms are everywhere during summer afternoons and evenings, but these heavy rains are 15 minutes, or maybe 30, tops, before they’ve spent themselves and the sun reclaims its rightful place.

This storm was nothing like that. I’d already been riding in steady rain for 100 miles when I got engulfed by this front, with its embedded thunderstorms, just under 250 miles from home, and it rained heavily, steadily, for the whole four-plus more hours it took me to get there.

Oh, and for the next day and half after that.

For the next 100 plus miles of I-81, I hammered up the road at my customary dry pace at about 3950 rpm on the tach. Despite the LT’s creditable impression of a 1960s Glastron Speedboat — “Ooh, what a lovely wake and roostertail you have, my dear” — the combination of sheer mass and British tires meant I never felt so much as a squirm out of my contact patches.

I adjusted my windscreen so that I could just see over the top edge, while the water streaming off the screen was deflected over my head. My hands were dry and protected inside the envelope made by the LT’s rearview mirrors. The cockpit wind deflectors were shut, and even though I’d elected to leave my goretex lined boots at home in the closet, the lower fairing was keeping my feet dry enough so that my unlined but well oiled leather boots were not admitting any water.

We might be out here riding in the middle of The Devil’s Very Own Lawn Sprinkler, but with this suit and this bike I was dry, comfortable and in control.

***

After about three hours in the saddle, in the best of conditions, it’s usually prudent to stop if only for a stretch.

After three hours in these conditions — cool, wet, stressy, with a sprinkling of upper body workout — I’d been going through a fair amount of energy, and all metabolic systems had been working overtime.

It was time for a level two pit stop — this human race car needed both fuel and four tires.

At the appointed time, the Northbound half of the Good Old Mount Sidney Safety Rest presented itself.

I executed my customary drop out of hyperspace and engine braked into the rest area and down to walking pace.

I chose a parking spot across the street from the rest area building, rolled to a stop and standed the bike. As I dismounted I tried to plan a route to the bathroom which involved no standing water. When that proved too challenging, I just ploshed across the street like a duckie booted toddler.

The rain rates, now that I was on foot and not at speed, were obviously Nash Metropolitan Fulla Clowns, Firehose Standing in for Sprinkles Full On Slapstick Comically Ridiculous. I couldn’t help but laugh.

People in the rest area were staring at me.

When laughing me finished swimming to the porch of the rest area, I removed my gloves and helmet, and did my best to shake off the water drops from the outside of that gear.

While I was having my moment, chuckling at the deluge between me and my LT, a man walked right up to me and lay one hand on each of my shoulders.

“The Lord Be With You on this day My Brother. May I pray for you and your safe journey?”

“Ordinarily, No, but today I’ll gratefully take any help I can get.”

I bowed my head in silence while my brand new brother petitioned the Lord on my behalf.

I thanked him and then he headed back to the cab of his tractor trailer.

***

Once into the men’s room, I looked for a ‘family stall’. Using the baby changing table to keep my helmet and gloves off the wet floor, I began the ‘Stich peeling ritual so I could locate the human being underneath.

In more than 30 years of ‘Stichery, I’ve arrived after tough rides looking a tad incontinent and feeling a little squishy, but not this time – I was dry as a bone. I was now, and I would be still when I got home

The third ‘Stich is apparently the charm.

***

After swimming back to the bike, I ended up swapping my foul weather gloves back for my elkskins. The new tech gloves’ outer shell had absorbed enough moisture to make putting them back on more of a wrestling match than I had the patience for. With less than 150 miles home and knowing I’d be rolling most all the way, the elkskins would be glove enough.

I rolled the big girl back through the gears, running the revs up enthusiastically before thockking up into the next. I got back up into cruise, and went back to laughing inside the clean hole my motorcycle was punching in this unrelenting rain.

“This kinda weather,” I thought “is just rain out the Yin-Yang”.

***

After another half hour on the cruise, it was finally time to leave the Interstate, and roll the remaining 50 miles of rural highway across Clarke County, Virginia, and Jefferson County, West Virginia back to Jefferson, and my home.

The rain, the mist and the greenness were enough to keep me in good spirits, as the final familiar miles rolled away.

Sweet D had the garage door up, so I rolled into my spot, swung my leg over and ju-jitsued the LT up onto its main stand.

Looking at the LT’s dashboard clock, a ride that normally took six hours has taken more than ten.

***

Sweet Doris from Baltimore was glad to see me, and see me off that bike.

All was not perfect however.

“I’m cold, Greggie. I think our heat is broke.”

I should note that Sweet D wasn’t the only one that might have been cold.

When I’m on a roll, I’m really on a roll.

After reading some blinking furnace diagnostic LEDs confirmed her theory, I was at least glad I had some dry firewood stacked inside by my woodstove.

90 minutes later, I had hot iron in my den and some good spirits in my glass.

It is good to journey out. It is better to be home.

***

So my brothers and sisters enjoy, embrace and carry with you always those rides that are only sunny days.

Just know that inside that sunny day, also lives as well the cold and the darkness.

In life, wholeness only exists in balance between life’s opposing principal qualities — pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, love and loneliness.

And explorations of balance come naturally to those of us that experience life from the motorcycle’s saddle.

***

I’d had this plan.

Which is unusual for me, because, well, my plans never work.

But it was a good plan, a plan in which I’d made a significant emotional investment, a plan that seemed plausible, a plan that felt like it really could work.

Which of course, is why it was doomed.

The plan was a motorcycle meet-up with a peer from the online motorcycle universe. We had been fans of each other’s work, and frequenters of each other’s web presence, but fans from a pretty prohibitive distance — he being based out of LA, and me out of Central Maryland — only about 2600 road miles separating where we parked our respective motorcycles.

Out of the blue one day my ‘buddy’ shared that he was going to be covering an East Coast-based motorcycle event, that would place him within a comfortable day’s ride of Jefferson.

I conferred briefly with Sweet Doris From Baltimore, who blessed the event and my participation in it — “You need a good bike trip” — and so the short life-cycle of the plan began.

***

The event that both of planned to cover was the Asheville, North Carolina, Moto Giro. The Moto Giro is a timed endurance and skills event modelled on the famed Moto Giro d’Italia. The Giro is a competition for motorcycles of 250ccs or less in displacement, and built in 1966 or before. Because of the event’s provenance, there are lots of beautiful and cool oddball Euro rides — tiny Ducatis, Benellis and NSUs. People with low tolerance for drama and strong competitive urges stick to Honda CB160s and 175s.

While hairy chested motorcycle racers may point out that such an event — structured for the care and feeding of tiny tiddler motorcycles — has all of the inherent drama of watching paint dry, they would be missing the point. Anybody who has the bravery and desire to finish two back to back 175 mile days, on a 50 year old small displacement Italian motorcycle, has made their dedication and enthusiasm clearly known, and is fine by me.

You will see some amazingly restored and prepared unusual motorcycles, but the Giro is clearly an event that is really about the slightly bent, moto-addled characters to whom this somehow seems like a good idea.

A nice Friday ride from Jefferson to Asheville — the opportunity to meet up with my bud, to drink a few craft beers and trade a few rounds of vintage biker lies, a Saturday based event and then a Sunday roll home, with some miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway, seemed almost too good to be true.

I had six weeks or so to make sure my bike was ready, make my arrangements, and roll out on what sounded like a grand adventure.

***

Almost immediately, parts began to fall off this ride, as soon as it began rolling.

As I searched the Internet for information on the Moto Giro, I found….. nothing.

Huh?

Maybe I’ve become over acclimated, but it seems to be a built-in assumption of the Internet Age that If Something Exists In The Real World, then It Exists On The Internet.

I mean, if you have information you intend to share, where else might you share it?

It is important to note, that although I was asking a valid question, it was not the correct question, but let me not get ahead of myself.

In Internet searches, all I found was one blacklisted, compromised web server, info on prior years, and a Facebook page. The Facebook page contained no event information save one member complaining that he was in the doghouse with his wife because the event fell on Mother’s Day.

And that was it.

Because my Bud From LA had proposed the event, I concluded that surely he was read in, right?

I mean, you can’t write about what you can’t find.

So I sent him an e-mail asking him to share the event particulars, and got back……nothing.

“I won’t sweat it,” I thought.

“There’s plenty of time left. All will be revealed.”

***

Only it wasn’t.

Two or three weeks went by, and after two or three abortive attempts to get more information through Bud From LA at a certain point I began to get a little jumpy about the whole deal. It was starting to seem like one of those run-ins with Coyote, where I’d been encouraged to believe in something that did not exist, to remember something that had never happened.

I was looking over my shoulder. It was starting to mess with my head.

Then weird took the whole thing to the next level.

I got an invite through my work e-mail to schedule a trip to my company’s Charlotte, NC office, for a product development workshop the workweek before my scheduled ride to Asheville for the Giro.

Now from my house to Asheville is about 420 miles using the most direct route, which is, obviously, the route I never take.

From my house to Charlotte is about 450 highway miles.

Charlotte and Asheville are all of about 120 miles apart. 120 miles on an LT is less than half a fuel tank — it may not actually be far enough to fully warm the bike and all of its driveline fluids up to full operating temperature.

Net/net is that my employer was going to be having me make the trip to North Carolina as a business trip, essentially paying me to travel and be in the event’s back yard when work ended Friday.

To me, it felt like the Universe was mysteriously and serendipitously aligning.

Which of course it wasn’t.

***

What I knew about the Giro, though, was a constant.

Exactly Jack.

So I began to get creative.

Rolling Physics Problem has a number one fan.

#1 Fan’s name is Bud.

Unlike Bud from LA – whose actual name is not Bud – Bud’s actual name is Bud.

Hi Bud!

I have been motorcycling a long time. Bud has been motorcycling a very long time indeed.

As a result of his life well-ridden, I have this theory that Bud knows absolutely everyone that has anything interesting to do with motorcycling.

So I tested the theory.

In an e-mail conversation, I mentioned to Bud that I was having problems getting info about the event.

Turned out he’d ridden a few Giros, and knew Will, the organizer for this particular event.

24 hours later the guy called my cel phone while I was out in the shop supporting the Trikedrop build project.

It doesn’t prove the theory. It’s too small a data set.

Anyway, my conversation with Will proved enlightening in myriad ways.

The first was the gradual revelation that in all of my thoughts about the Giro, I had been asking the wrong question.

I kept approaching it from the perspective that the Giro would want people to know all about the event, and were doing a bad job sharing it. What slowly dawned on me, and Will gently confirmed it, was that the information wasn’t out there because they saw no utility in sharing it. The lack of info wasn’t a flub — it was a deliberate strategy.

I went in thinking The Moto Giro was a show — all about event marketing.

I came out thinking it was strange cross between a Secret Society and Organized Crime.

And, more interestingly, it was organized crime that had invited me in. I’d been moto made.

The organizers felt, frankly, that size was their enemy — that beyond a certain number of competitors the whole scene got too indeterministic to manage. Spectators were not really encouraged, either — anyone riding the course or parked along it was hazardous for the riders. The entire scene was for the benefit of the riders, and nothing else mattered.

I asked for the time and location of the start or finish line, and my request was politely but firmly declined.

I could, however, have the locations for the lunch stops, where parking lot Agility Special Test courses were to be deployed. If I wanted some road shots the event managers would position me after they’d met me at lunch and sized me up.

Will and I spent a fair amount of time on the phone, and came to a kind of meeting of the minds on old motorcycles and long rides. I completely embraced and internalized his protective attitude towards his ride.

Of the Giro, I knew as much as I was going to know — which represented about 98% more than I’d known an hour before. I had a date, a time, and the parking lot of an Ice Cream joint somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina.

Now all I had to do was get there.

***

About a week before my planned departure, Mother Nature got downright frosty. We had rain and overnight lows in the high twenties — I spent quality time in the evenings hoisting wood into my parlour woodstove.

The long term weather forecast showed a trendline towards a warm up right around the Monday when I was scheduled to ride to Charlotte.

***

Three days out, Bud From LA pulled out.

He’d been tapped to cover an event for a major print publication, so the bigger dog won out.

Couldn’t really blame him. It was just a shame that a trip started out as an opportunity for our meet-up had now turned into another lone wolf expedition.

Travelling light means owing nothing to no one, so I did my best to greet the development with a bright spirit.

***

The day of the ride down started with the sun out and about 45 degrees at coffee time. I spent the morning splitting time between a few conference calls and carrying saddlebag liners and seat bags out to the garage. I got my laptop backpack and a fair larder of hydration and snacks onto the top case. I secreted a paid of waterproof Keen work boots and a set of cold weather gloves in the LT’s CD-changer reduced right case. I put my business sports jacket and a light duty textile riding jacket into my seat bag. And the old Compaq swag shoulder bag — the exact form factor as the factory saddlebag liner — containing my clothes and toiletries into the left side case.

I made sure that the rear suspension’s hydraulic preload was set near the very bottom of its setting — I’ve deliberately biased spring settings for carrying passengers, so the LT rides better when it’s carrying measurably more than just my weight.

After tarrying over a long hug from Sweet Doris From Baltimore, I pulled on a light technical fleece, my one piece Aerostitch Roadcrafter — which is finally starting to appear almost broken in — and grabbed my Elkskin Gauntlets and my Shoei.

These minutes of contemplation in front of a loaded motorcycle always try and then fail to avoid what seems to me a natural anxiety. The thousand miles or so of mountain road that lie ahead — and everything that can possibly occur along them — seem to telegraph into awareness for a few vivid seconds.

But with the snap of the Shoei’s strap retainer, and the velcro on my gauntlets snugged, the starter is fingered, and the time for anxiety is gone. With the cold K12 engine making a semi-industrial symphony of as yet loose tolerance clatters, I rolled the bike out of the driveway, and headed out towards US-340.

***

US-340 essentially connects my front door to Interstate 81. After turning out of my neighborhood, the ramp onto 340 West is about 150 yards up the state highway. Frankly, its way too soon for a cold, fully loaded motorcycle that had spent an unfortunately substantial proportion of its recent life sitting around waiting for me.

I drifted the bike down the big grade on light throttle, trying to get any heat in the engine before really asking for meaningful power or revs. Fortunately, at noon on a Tuesday, the highway was for all purposes empty, letting me tarry a bit as the temp dial began to finally swing right. The big downgrade leads to Cactoctin Creek and what goes down, of course, must go up.

I gently rolled into the throttle just before the bottom and the bridge, looking to build some serious momentum for the dynamometer quality grade that is 340 leading away from The Creek. Under leading throttle continuously growing wider I spun the big mill up this steep grade — getting into the K’s trademark intake shriek as the revs cleared 6 large. With acceleration and momentum building startlingly strongly for what is a very large motorcycle, I banged off a textbook slap-two-metal-ingots-together Getrag gearbox german motorcycle shift up into fourth, and then topped the hill and headed down the long straight run through open fields that leads to Brunswick, and then on into West Virgina.

I wish there was a cloud in the sky, because it would make for a more credible story, but there wasn’t. The temp was in the high fifties, with little wind — it was bright, and crisp and perfect. I rolled the bike gently left and right to the sides of the tires — everything felt tight and grippy and round.

I might not be back, Baby, but we’d be arriving there shortly.

***

340 covers just under sixty miles through rural West Virginia and Virgina, on a mix of 2 lane and 4 lane highways, and on a good day, you can maintain a pretty good pace.

Today was looking to be a pretty good day. The ride didn’t provide any of the occasional congestion or backups that are common in Northern Virginia. Visibility, traction, temperature were just stinking perfect. I spent a lot of time in the fun part of fourth gear on this Flying Brick motor, and when I saw cars, I used LTOs and I passed them.

I-81 came up nearly before I knew it. We were sailing. It was effortless.

Pretty good.

***

Moving onto the Interstate I wound 4th gear out again and then finally got to top gear and the big meditative Ohmmmmm. I set the Blue Ridge mountains off my left shoulder, felt the sun on my face and just resolved to enjoy, to savor this day.

I came back down from meditative reverie to a stomach that wanted to register a complaint. The stomach was right of course — my trip meter showed that 130 miles had disappeared and it was way past time for lunch. Right on queue, General Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System served up the Mount Sidney Safety Rest Area, with a nice grassy picnic area and a restroom. I dropped down to subsonic speeds and coasted into the rest area and right up to an open table.

I pulled my lunch — a wrap, an apple and some water — out of the top case, and commenced to snarfing. In my somewhat conspicuous rider’s gear, I always attract a personality type that my longtime friend Neil has termed “Thee Enthusiast”.

“Thee Enthusiast” always has a motorcycle that is bigger, faster, cooler and generally gnarlier than yours.

And since he can see by my outfit that I am a Scooter Man, “Thee Enthusiast” assumes that there is nothing I would rather do than hear all about it, all 23 chapters with pictures to illustrate and circles and arrows on the back of each one.

Which would be almost completely incorrect.

As much as I like to talk bikes — and I DO like to talk bikes — all I want to do today is roll.

Still I get to hear — while snarfing — about TE’s XJR 1200 Yamahas. Which are admittedly pretty gnarly.

If you’re into an air cooled transverse inline 4, this is about the stoutest one you can get.

I can see how, on the open road, one of those XJs might be nearly as long legged as this KBike.

Thee Enthusiast and me, we’re really one and the same.

He wishes me safe journey as I pull out of the rest area.

I give just a little extra twist of the throttle on up the ramp, just for his sonic enjoyment.

***

For a day that started cool, it seemed like every mile I went further south translated into more sun and rising temperatures.

On wheels up this a.m. my Roadcrafter had been buttoned-up against 57 degrees. Now I was running — collar open and visor up — at a temperature a full ten degrees warmer.

I’d checked the forecast for Charlotte, an it was supposed to be 81 there at the end of the day.

So it was fair skies, and rising temperatures.

***

Around 230 miles, I pitted briefly for gas and more hydration.

In a rare concession to Character, Darkside, my K12, was doing a thing it always does if it isn’t getting ridden frequently enough — which is, its fuel gauge becomes completely unreliable. My understanding is that the sensor is a mechanical, analog device — a sort of captive toilet float inside a tube, with a rheostat that gets flaky if it isn’t used.

Mine was flaky all right. Moving over a range of about 5/8s of the total, with little rhyme or reason to why it was in any given position at any given time.

If you take the bike out and blow 4 or 5 tanks of gas through it, it’s perfectly fine.

But at its flakiest, it’s the sort of thing that will drive a moto-nerd completely to distraction, and I was using all my stored up inner peace to keep it from intruding on a ride that had segued into one big endless internal combustion groove.

This is the first motorcycle I ever owned that had a fuel gauge, anyway, so I do not have to develop new skills to operate one without one.

Gauge flakiness, though, does have the net effect of calling for more conservative fuel range planning.

And although I’ve made — with working instrumentation — between 270 and 290 miles on a single tank, with no instrumentation at about 220 a certain anxiety began to squeak a bit.

And I didn’t want to harsh the groove, so I just got gas then boogied.

***

It’s hard for me to remember having a more pleasant day’s run down the highways of the Blue Ridge.

After 200 miles or so the K-Bike finally finished really warming through, and was just thrumming along like a big bass string.

After another hundred I split off onto I-77, and headed south into Carolina and up into the mountains I’d been running beside for so long.

As the bike cleared the summit, we went through Fancy Gap, Virginia. The Interstate had plentiful and clear signage that this was the proper exit for Blue Ridge Parkway — from previous rides I seem to remember Fancy Gap as one of the highest points on The Parkway, except for maybe Mount Mitchell.

I remember thinking, as we crested that mountain in the warm, crisp sunshine, that with a little luck I’d be back here, in a few days, to fully enjoy The Parkway, to meditate in the presence of the Motorcycling Gods.

***

As the K-bike began the descent off the Blue Ridge, I was greeted by the view into the valley below. Though my surroundings were grey stone, everything below was brightest green. White-barned farms and green forest spread out from horizon to horizon — it was fit and fertile, almost too beautiful to be real. It was no mystery why people had gladly settled here.

With the sun just behind my right shoulder, and God’s Own Diorama spread out in front of me, I really anticipated what a lovely two hours run down the mountains and foothills into Charlotte this would be.

And a sweet run it was.

Temp was now in the low seventies, the Interstate was mostly new, and it seemed that there was almost no one with which I had to share the road. The roadway dealt with the descending topography though a series of wide left right bends, which at sufficient speed, and we did have sufficient speed, kept the ride mildly entertaining.

On a piece of alpine highway like this, these last generation Flying Brick motorcycles — with their massive beam frames — are crazy smooth and comfortable at nearly crazy speeds , with big torque, big cornering stiffness and confidence in spades.

It was more than pretty good.

***

After a meditative late afternoon and early evening roll down a very big hill, I found myself in Metro Charlotte. I’d hit town late enough that I was in behind evening congestion.

I’d had the forethought to prepare my mental mapping so that I had a very clear picture of my route that didn’t require resorting to paper maps or electronic augmentation.

After passing through Center City Charlotte, but before hitting the southern beltway, I stopped and gassed again. I was only about 15 miles from my destination but at the end of my calculated conservative fuel range.

When I pulled off the beltway into Ballantyne, where my employer’s offices are located, it was warm but not humid, and the sun was still low in the sky. It’s a rare good thing to be savored, when a journey ends with the sun still up. My hotel was easily located, and Darkside was killswitched and placed on the stand.

With the exhaust tinking its little metallic song of cooling, I pulled off my helmet and just drank in the sight of this no longer modern motorcycle. It had taken more than a few years to fully appreciate the capability of this machine – to bond with it, but bond with it I had.

I knew of a good brewpub within walking distance of my hotel — one that had some pretty good pub food chops as well.

It seemed like all this day needed at this point was a decent Hefeweisen or Pale raised to show my appreciation for my endless blessings.

Like this:

Good riding is like dancing — to get to that magic place one needs to relax and sense and surf the flow of the road beneath you — not forcing things but becoming one with it. It can be hard to achieve the utter concentration of focus and selflessness — it sounds almost Buddhist — where as a rider you are both there and not there concurrently.

Some people can close their eyes, inhale deeply and just get there every day.

For others that place might be as remote as the surface of the moon.

***

In the middle of a stranglingly soul crushing work day, the internet bought me this.

Yet there was Troy, piloting a more than 80 year old motorcycle, and instead of being mindful of conserving his priceless museum piece, was absolutely wringing its neck — riding it like he stole it — and keeping up a pace that appeared to be in the same zip code as a current superbike racer.

Troy was absolutely in the zone — limbs loose and graceful, body position low on the motorcycle, with the throttle mostly wide open and the bike moving around — demonstrating the unmistakable bucking movement under power of a rigid rear roadracer. If the bike had brakes Troy made absolutely no use of them. At points, both ends of the bike would completely break loose — something that seemed to faze Troy not a whit — he’d just gather up the bike with gentle inputs on the bars and go back to shepherding the RSS back in the direction of another Pole Position pace lap.

His riding was nothing less than a thing of beauty to behold.

The sound of that RSS motor spinning hard way up the rev band — that boxer aeromotor drone — was both familiar and evocative — a clear invitation.

I headed for the garage at my first opportunity.

***

Don’t get me wrong.

Troy Corser’s entire self is likely less than the width of one of my chubby legs. His worst day in the saddle no doubt eclipses my best.

But watching the old boxer moving around underneath him had me ghosting the sensations in my hands and feet and thighs, and I knew I could play back that magic I’d seen.

I knew just the place to do it, too.

I headed over the ridge from Jefferson — headed down to the Potomac and Point of Rocks. From there I rode Ballenger Creek Pike through the southern farms of Frederick County — tight technical stuff through the woods then opening up to run through pastureland.

I was headed for Cap Stein Road — a hedgerow-lined Colonial Era road that followed the property lines of those earliest Maryland estates.

Like many of these old roads, it gets right down to business, with a tight decreasing radius right hander less than 50 yards in. It’s like starting a fist fight with your best right cross straight to the face — there’s no mystery about one’s intentions after that.

Cap Stein is lovely because the next several corners combine grades and apexes — from the tops of some hills and the bottoms of others. The topography hides the corner exits, but this is by no means my first run down this road. I keep the R90’s motor spun up and on the boil — it is only for a set of bang-bang 90s that I’m forced to drop a gear to third for my entries.

The S moves around on its suspension as tires scrub and slide — I stay loose and let the wheels do what they do.

My old motorcycle and I are truly alive — straightening out a twisty roadway and making a wonderful noise.

Having seen and heard the Brittens run, and having walked through and oogled all of the racing paddock, it was finally time to just kick back, have a brew or two, and just drink it all in and watch some racing.

I left the pit area and went back to my bike.

Parked beside me was a perfect Laverda Jota 1000, whose owner walked up at the same time as I started putting on my gear. Laverda Guy was another local boy, who lived just over the Georgia Line.

My short-time friend just grinned and then obliged me by gearing up and firing up his orange beast.

Start up behavior, with the bike’s three Del’Ortos, was just a variant of the cold blooded, too-large throated start behavior of my own R90s, which will usually stall on a cold start 30 seconds after the chokes are turned off.

Italian carburetors never disappoint.

So after the restart, and after oil flow had smoothed the operation of the top end back out, the big orange bike sat there idling lumpily, though taking blips of throttle with a rapid bark.

I bade him safe journey, and displayed the thumbs-up salute as the Jota rolled two gears worth of moderate throttle, doing just the tiniest bit of Italian Moto Opera.

I’m very glad I took the time to listen.

***

I rolled the LT around the Barber Perimeter Road, just sightseeing and happy to catch even a little breeze. One of my fellow big bike enthusiasts had told me that Ace Corner ticket holders had a paved parking lot across the road from the entrance, on the grounds of the Barber Racing School. Fellow Enthusiast had been right, and sharing a piece of pavement with a line of dozen track Porsches seemed OK to me, though I can’t vouch for how the Porsches felt about their new wheel-challenged neighbors.

I rambled back into Ace Corner, resolved to chill and try to stop drinking it all in before it drowned me.

I wandered up to the top of the hill, scored a burger and a Naked Pig — a nice pale ale from Gadsden Alabama’s Back Forty Brewing — and found myself a place to sit — in the shade and with a good view of the Carousel and the next two corners of the Track.

There were classes for small displacement singles and twins — close battles that played back the 2-stroke vs 4-stroke holy wars that had consumed two or three decades of motorcycle racing. There were larger displacement twins, which saw great sounding combat between BMW AIrheads, VTwin MotoGuzzis and classic Ducatis, with an occasional Triumph or Yamaha XS650 thrown in.

I thought the guys I was sitting next to were familiar, and they were. They were 5 or 6 members of North Carolina’s Tarheel Travellers BMW Club. They were frequent visitors to my local DC Area Square Route Rally, and this wasn’t our first beer-and-BS-session.

We watched some sidecar racing — which rearranged my mind — and a few more heats, including one for the vintage racing singles — the big booms of the Nortons, Gileras, Velocettes and Matchlesses echoing back from the treeline lining the park.

What really was a long afternoon somehow disappeared like water on a hot exhaust pipe — a moment that seemed like it could stay suspended forever disappearing in an instant.

As the sun settled lower the racing calendar wrapped, and the parade laps marked the end of the day.

***

I was resolved to hang round Ace Corner for a while — to talk to some people and see some stuff. I knew they had a band coming on later, and I wanted to just enjoy the bikey people and the bikey vibe for as long as I could.

There was yet another bike show coming on, and I spent a little time admiring the talent.

I appreciated this custom /5 Toaster. I have one of these, too, but mine’s not quite so shiny.

Also in the Shiny Category was this custom Norton Commando, a machine that eventually took first prize as the Most Custom Cafe of all the Custom Cafes. With everything but the frame tubes naked polished alloy, I had to agree with the judge’s decision on this one.

Also shiny, but in a completely different way, was Walt Seigl’s MV Agusta Bol D’or.

Walt’s motorcycle looks as finished or more finished than anything Agusta has lately built. A complete testament to their heritage making use of their most modern hardware — the best of their past and the best of their future — another bike that would have me running to the phone to buy one if a space-freighter full of currency were to crash land in my yard.

OK, so this one is only half a CB750, but the judges say it still counts.

***

Ace Corner was scheduled to rock into the nighttime, but the food vendors had gone.

You could still score Naked Pigs and Truckstop Honeys — more fun from my new friends at Back Forty brewing — but you couldn’t get any food.

Note to organizers — if you’re going to throw an evening long party where alcohol is served — to a large bunch of Bikers, no less, one might consider making sure that some food is available, even if only to serve as buffer for the drink people were likely to be puttin down.

I know my body, and this point wasn’t negotiable.

I started moving about the compound in search of someone who had been in a position to think ahead, and had come prepared for this.

So I do what any hungry man would do.

I followed my nose.

And my nose led me to the Vintage Iron Motorcycle Club.

Like me, the Vintage Motorcycle Club was made up of hungry men and women with old motorcycles. Hungry men and women who had multiple charcoal grills working up high, and were blowing grilled beef and vegetable smoke my way.

I introduced myself in that patently subtle manner that is a trademark.

“Hey, Dude. You in the food business? No? You wanna be?”

After learning a little about The Vintage Iron Club — which is based out of Palm Beach County, Florida — who seem to be really nice folk that share a certain illness of mine — I decided I really liked these folk and their attitude.

One of their party was a chef who normally worked on someone’s private MegaYacht, but was between cruises right now.

These folk were rolling big.

So I made ‘a small contribution’ to The Club, and even bought a few raffle tickets.

The Club, it seemed, was raising money for Charity — The Paley Foundation, who helps children with a certain serious orthopedic illness — and was raffling off this.

Looking at it, all I kept thinking was it would be perfect for Finn.

“He’d look badass on that thing. And it’s just the right bike to learn on.”

The people who like to tell you things will tell you that visualization is the secret to success. That if you can see it you can be it.

I visualized that sweet Honda 350 Scrambler into my garage more times than I’m willing to cop to.

It was in the bag.

That shit don’t work.

Never has.

***

Anyway, after one of the only burgers I’ve ever eaten that I might be willing to admit might have been at least equal to my own (as well as several salads that were rocking good), I bade my new club brothers and sisters adieu, and found a cold Truckstop Honey and went back to chatting with random folk and seeing what I could see.

A few EZ-Ups to the right of Vintage Iron was an Artist, Makoto Endo, who was exhibiting his motorcycle paintings — which of course bespoke the eye of a moto-master, all Vincents and Nortons and Agustas and Kenny’s TZ, oh my. Makoto was also taking commissions on the spot and doing portraits of motorcycles that were presented.

I spent some time watching him working on a painting of this nice /6 BMW with it matching Steib sidecar. From what I could see, Makoto could rightly claim equal parts of inspiration from Japanese calligraphic techniques and from the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. This kind of painting is active, athletic.

Painting isn’t usually a spectator sport, but for Makoto at Barber, it certainly was.

***

So we talked some more. Then we rocked some more.

And had another Truckstop Honey, and talked and gawked some more.

At a certain point, I kind of put my hands on my hips, leaned back a little, and drew a long deep breath.

Folks that are fans of Jay Leno’s new car show ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ don’t need to be introduced to Bernard — who is Jay’s Chief Mechanic and restorer for his superb and massive collection of cars and motorcycles.

Diehard sidecar fans are likely light-headed from laughing at my use of the term ‘passenger’, when everyone knows the person who doesn’t have the handlebars in their hands is called ‘The Monkey’. Big Dog Racing’s Monkey, Kevin Kautzky, kind of breaks the monkey mold. Most Monkeys are like jockeys or crew coxwains – teensy weensy diminutive personages designed to maximize power to weight and minimize wind resistance.

Kevin ain’t no little girly-man-monkey, no sir. Maybe my own lack of stature is affecting my perception, but in his leathers and racing boots he must be a muscular six-foot six or six-foot seven, at least. Sizing him up I could visualize him wanting to make the chair’s tire stick at speed and being able to make it stick.

When I saw the Big Dog rig out on the circuit later, what I had imagined was easily confirmed.

***

Pitting with Big Dog is the Formula Super2 of Steve Stull and Heidi Neidhofer. Since once can safely assume that sidecarists are rugged individualists, it is not surprising that Steve and Heide eschew the conformist “Monkey” designation and prefer instead ‘driver and co-driver’.

Their Super2 bike mates the same liter class four cylinder engine of the Formula One machines to a shorter, lighter chassis. Where the Formula One feels like a cruise missile, Super2 comes across all aerobatic biplane.

Co-driver Heidi does conform to the more typical physical profile of they-who-doesn’t-hold-the-handlebars — more of a dead-serious-gymnast’s compact strength compared to Kevin’s pro-cornerback build.

The lighter, shorter and theoretically more agile Super 2 should be able to really embrace and exploit the Barber Circuit’s tighter, more technical sections.

And again, when I sat on the crest of Ace Corner later in the afternoon during the sidecar heat race — sitting in a spot where I could see the Carousel and the next two corners, Steve and Heide were like two manifestations of a single mind — Heide a constant smooth blur of motion on the rig, and Steve constantly on the gas and setting up for the next corner.

I’ll admit I was pulling for Bernard, but Steve and Heide were doing things with their rig in the corners that were rearranging the two-wheel limited perceptions of my mind. Their racer was carrying so much speed and exiting so hard that I found myself just giggling insanely just watching them and their chair as it just walked completely away.

***

In sidecar racing, one just really can’t get around ‘The Monkey’.

Their skill in controlling the traction available at the drive and cornering wheels is really what makes the whole unlikely thing go.

The sidecar chairmen and chairwomen have balls and skill I will never have.

Wandering down what seemed to be Sidecar Row in the Barber paddock, I came to something I had been expecting to see.

Unlike two wheeled roadracing, where the manufacturer had only experienced limited success, in sidecar racing BMW boxer twins had been utterly dominant for roughly three decades.

Sitting out front of the Blue Moon Cycles’ shelter was this classic BMW kneeler racing sidecar. The motor in it looked like it could have been borrowed straight out of my Toaster.

One of the friends of the shop saw me deep in thought contemplating their kneeler, and walked up to chat.

“So will we see this out there running in anger today?”

“Oh, no man. His Monkey passed away last year. After 30 years together, I mean how could you?

He don’t race no more.”

You can not get around ‘The Monkey’.

***

Guys that race an old motorcycle must possess a certain level of inner strength and determination.

The older the motorcycle, the stronger that inner steel needs to be.

If you’re racing a mostly unrestored 1913 Indian Scout — look at the surface rust on the frame and forks — you’re titanium.

If, in addition to your 1913 Scout, you are running 8 or 9 Nortons — motorcycles with a somewhat deserved reputation for a certain fragility when under stress — well, man, you’re Superman.

***

I’d been watching a race over the pit wall as I wandered around the paddock. The class seemed to be basically ‘Classic UJM’, with air cooled transverse fours and twin shock rears. If you are a person of a certain age, these are your motorcycles.

You know who you are.

In that class, one guy was clearly smoother, faster and more in the groove than his competitors. He lead from the start, and smoothly stretched his lead so he came across the line completely alone.

This guy, moto-writer Nick Ienatsch, was that guy.

“Ya gave me a great bike — all I had to do was not mess it up.”

He was visibly having a hell of a time, and was clearly as fast in the flesh as he is on the page.

***

Some people go GP Racing.

Other people like to ride pit bikes in the Paddock.

Some people like to do both.

***

There are lots of people that think that the Archetype and Highest achievement of the Racing motorcycle is the Classic British Single.

A lot of those people make the trek to Alabama for the Barber Vintage Festival.

The Classic British single take a lot of different types — Norton Manxes and Internationals, the Velocettes and Matchlesses — but they all share an elemental form that is the motorcycle reduced to its absolute minimum: a single cylinder, two wheels and a place to hold on.

Being a guy that thinks about simplicity and complexity, I got no gas with people that are willing to put themselves on the line to demonstrate that these simplest possible motorcycles are somehow a higher expression of what motorcycling means.

These are motorcycles that speak loudly to me. I can feel every power hit of these big singles as the grips grow wider in my hands closing in on redline. I can feel the front tire lifting free of the track on tight corner exits, and power wheelying coming across rises in the pavement.

These are hard motorcycles for hard men. The very notion of refinement — something that might temper their essential mechanical brutality — seems utterly alien standing in front of a Norton Manx.

***

The American Historic Racing Motorcycle Racing Association’s (AHMRA) Number Plate Registry identifies number 14x as belonging to Randy Hoffman.

I didn’t get the chance to talk to you, Randy, but if i had, I would have told you something you already know — that you have absolutely exquisite taste in motorcycles.

This 1938 Velocette KTT Mk VII is just beautiful — almost as narrow and light as a bicycle, except this bicycle has a substantial single cylinder engine, a girder front end, and a shapely fuel tank with perfect black paint and gold pinstriping.

Single cylinder Vincent Comets are extremely rare in the United States. Rarer still are The Grey Flash, a single cylinder in full racing trim – essentially a one cylinder version of the famous Black Lightning. This one is a head-turner.

The overwhelming impression one comes away with is that this Grey Flash is almost made of more air than metal — there’s almost nowhere where one can’t see straight through the motorcycle.

The tale that Vincent historians tell is that Phil Irving was busy at the draftsman’s table and accidentally superimposed two blueprints for the Comet’s engine on top of each other and realized that there was already the space required to install a second top end in the space behind the cylinder on the Comet’s crankcases. This flash of insight produced the Vincent Rapide’s V-twin, and changed the course of motorcycling history.

Looking at this Grey Flash, I can’t help but think of my son Finn’s new Buell Blast. Feel free to scoff. Everybody else does. Faced with a completely different problem, Eric Buell removed the rear cylinder from a Harley Davidson Sportster’s engine, and ended up in nearly the same place.

One approach was additive, and one was subtractive, but the two motorcycles — with their inclined singles and monoshock rears, are startlingly close to the same elemental solution.

***

Motorcycle enthusiasm can require sustained financial commitment.

Duh.

People will tell you — why are unknown people always telling us things? — that because of that hierarchy of self-imposed enthusiasm taxes — that the finest kind of boat, or the finest kind of airplane, is somebody else’s boat — somebody else’s airplane.

People have told me — there they are again — that the same sort of logic applies to owning any performance Velocette motorcycle.

Looking at this one, though, it looks like any price would be totally worth it.

I’m not really that into motorcycle competition, with certain noticeable exceptions.

(Go Rossi!)

With that out of the way though, I did have the experience of attending a recent motorcycle competition whose extraordinary enthusiasm, dedication and frankly, downright weirdness only served to underscore just how deep the love of motorized two wheeled motation cuts in the rugged, frankly mad individuals that share it.

And no, I’m not talking about the Iron Butt Rally.

***

Just after I first moved out of Baltimore to Frederick County, Maryland, in the late 1980s, I was making a visit to one of our local motorcycle shops, and saw a poster displayed in a place of honor.

There was red, white and blue. There was fireworks. And there was a Harley Davidson XR sliding sideways at full lock, with a roostertail of dirt pluming out behind.

It looked like a total blast.

And, unsurprisingly, it totally was.

***

I’d called up a riding pal of mine from Baltimore, an artist who was occasionally known to make use of Yamaha XS650 engines in his work.

He told me there were quite a lot of them available due to a counterbalancer that, well, didn’t. I will have to defer to his expertise in that regard.

I also packed up my then young son, and we headed up to the fairgrounds.

We learned a lot that day.

One, most scary, hairy, leathery bikey 1%er looking people are total teddy bears.

Two, there’s a reason it’s easy to get a spectator spot right on the outside rail at the exit of turn three.

Three, there’s also a reason that the race control team all have hearing protection.

Finally, that there was an obvious reason that Rodney Farris, who just ran away from everyone that day, had “Hot Rod” sewn on the back of his leathers. Someone, it seemed, had neglected to tell Rod that the same thingee that one pulled on to open the throttle could also be used to close it. Oh, well.

Net/net was that we had a great time, and were totally hooked on flat track racing. And nothing about being baked in the sun, deafened and rubbed raw from being pelted with ground-up limestone Harley XR roostertails was going to change that.

***

We attended more than a few runnings of The Fricthie over the next couple of years, but somehow got out of the habit.

This year, though, was different.

Monday, the 29th of June saw me catch some absolutely evil gastrointestinal flu bug. By Wednesday, both my wife and daughter had it too. As a result, anything we might have normally done for the July 4th Holiday — camping trip, back yard barbeque, etc — got scrubbed cause we felt too bad to even consider it.

By Friday, I felt about 72% human. Sweet Doris from Baltimore asked, mid-afternoon, what we were doing for the 4th.

“What about The Fritchie?” I asked.

D had been on somewhat of a motorsports kick, and she immediately endorsed the notion.

I hit my computer to get some details.

The primary promoter for the race was Richard Riley, the proprietor of Fredericktowne Yamaha, and one of the nicest, most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met in the business. Richard’s shop has custom-ordered most of my gear and a fair bit of my parts, in addition to mounting way more than my fair share of tires over the years. Can’t say enough about what a friendly and helpful team he leads at Fredericktowne Yamaha / Triumph.

Richard has made it kind of a personal quest to shepherd the Barabara Fritchie Motorcycle Classic through its hundredth year. The Fritchie, it seems, is the Oldest Running Dirt Track Half Mile race held in the US — this year would be the 93rd running.

That it would make it this long seems like a long shot — The Fritchie is a regional race which has to compete with AMA Nationals, both at Hagerstown, MD and DuQuoin, IL, that are held on the days before and the days after our local race. The Big Guns of the AMA Grand National Championship have to focus on points-bearing races, so the Fritchie usually has a field made up of guys from the region — Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania.

This year’s promotional materials claimed #1 Plate Holder Jared Mees was going to be there. If I had any doubts, that sewed it up for me.

The last thing I remembered thinking before I drifted off to sleep was not to forget the package of foam ear plugs that I usually reserved for rock shows.

***

At 3 a.m. that morning, I woke up to a clap of thunder, and the sound of rain hammering on my roof.

I got out of bed and walked into the bathroom to look out my back window. All of my customary gully-washing, toad-strangling adjectives seemed inadequate for what I was seeing out that window.

I went back to bed, slow-thinking that this would all pass by morning.

It didn’t.

When I woke up, it was still hammering down outside. The drainage swales that are graded into the lot around my house looked a lot like the Olympic whitewater course. The heat races were scheduled to flag off at noon, making it hard to see how anyone could possibly race on a ground limestone track today.

By about 11, the rain let up, and my weather reports were indicating a few hours without precip, and a possible afternoon thunderstorm line, which is completely normal for any day in July in central Maryland.

So D and I hopped in the truck, and headed for the Fairgrounds.

***

Upon pulling up to The Great Frederick Fairgrounds, we were greeted by my good buddy Drew Alexander, who was working the gate and taking 20s. This was a good omen, as fun always follows Drew around like a puppy.

As we got up close to the track, Richard was on the track PA system talking about how he’d made the decision in the early morning, based on weather reports, to keep the event on, requiring a great leap of faith for the teams that had driven in in that blinding rain starting early that day.

Richard was starting to seem like somebody with God on his side, because conditions were cloudy, cool, and the guys coming off the track during open practice were all saying that track conditions had never been better.

The racing, as it always is, turned out to be stellar. One of the Expert Twins heat races had something like 6 lead changes before finally being settled. The new Kawasaki 650 vertical twin-based machines were, frankly, cleaning the clocks of folks who were still running the traditional Harley XRs. But the action on the track was tight, competitive, and well before the main event I had managed to shout myself hoarse.

Richard had arranged the day to honor Eddie Boomhower, an old racer and dealership race team owner who, despite 80 plus years, a new hip and cane, was nattily dressed and regaled the crowd with tales of the race and heroic deeds in days gone by. Boomhower is as much loved for his dedication to the racers his shop supported and in some cases, outright rescued with parts and whole motorcycles required to get to the start line, as he is for his racing exploits.

A new feature during this year’s class was a Boardtracker class. Because, near as I can tell, there hasn’t been a functioning board track race course in the United States since about 1930, anyone that wants to race one of these motorcycles has been all dressed up with nowhere to go. Most boardtrackers are unfairly confined to museums, so even seeing one running is a special treat. Seeing five or six of them whose owners were not only willing to put them at risk by riding them in the anger of competition, but in the filthy conditions of a track comprised of finely ground limestone, is such a rarity that I still can scarcely contain myself.

The bikes that showed for this class were gems. An Excelsior-Henderson Super X. A beautiful Indian with 10 inch straight pipes that dumped straight down at the ground beneath the motorcycle. The Indian even appeared to have prehistoric exhaust power valve, with the copper wire linkage in plain sight leading up to the butterfly inside the front header. A pack of HDs. Great vintage Firestone tires, with their tread patterns made up of the repeated words “NO SKID” formed in rubber. Not a single brake, or throttle in the whole bunch — speed control, such as it was, was accomplished just like in a World War One vintage airplane — if one needed to slow beneath WFO one shorted out the ignition with a bit of spring copper taped to the handlebar.

There was also a vintage class running. This class was awash in beautiful Trackmaster framed Triumphs and Nortons, with a few Yamaha 2-strokes thrown in for aroma. It was as if we’d gone through the wormhole right back into the world of Bruce Brown’s On Any Sunday. If you believe that the racing wars of 1970 were never settled, today was a chance to fight that fight all over again. If you are a Triumph man, Joey Alexander carried your flag to victory again today.

***

In the 250 Amateur class, something extraordinary was going on.

It’s a darn good thing that flat track racing is not Disneyland. In that amusement park universe, one is awash in signs that say “You Must Be This Tall to Ride”. Brandon Newman, age twelve, looked to be about 43 inches tall, and would have come up a full hand’s width under the required height line.

Altitude is clearly for the weak, based on what Brandon showed all of us this Saturday.

His dad, who was working his pit, had modified the bike with what looked to be a few 1x3s and quite a bit of red duct tape, to raise the pegs high enough to provide Brandon with solid purchase when he was on board.

And getting on board was no trivial task, when you’ve got what looks to be a 25 inch inseam.

For most racers, coming off the line is a two step process.

1) Jam the throttle to the stops

2) When the yellow START light comes on, dump the clutch.

For Brandon, however, this process required a third step, namely hopping up to get fully astride the bike, before executing Steps 1) and 2).

In the chaos of a flat track start, the time that it takes for that third step is decidedly non-trivial.

In his heat race, most of the racers were fully up to race pace at the exit from Turn 2 onto the back straight. For Brandon, the Step 1 delay meant he wasn’t really rolling until the entry into Turn Three.

If you were another competitor in 250 Amateur, or even the 450 Amateur with whom they shared the track, that was absolutely no solace whatsoever.

Because once Brandon got rolling, he was smooth, fast, and treated everything else on the track like they were stationary orange cones on the MSF Training Range.

In his heat, Brandon won his class, so it was on to the final.

In the 250 Final, someone was suffering from too much adrenaline and not enough attention.

At the start light, someone on the row behind Brandon went for the big holeshot. Problem was, he was launching while Brandon was still hopping aboard. Holeshot managed to centerpunch Brandon’s bike and they both went down like a ton of bricks.

Instant Red Flag.

Dad was over the pit wall in a flash.

Holeshot pretty quickly realized his mistake, and helped extricate Brandon from the heap of motorcycles, determined neither of them had any broken human parts, and executed a theatrical handshake that drew a round of applause from the crowd.

Dad Newman, meanwhile, was frantically picking the bike up — the rider was too small to manage same — and straightening some dramatically restyled clutch levers, brake pedals and other odds and ends. Fortunately, Dad’s mechanic chops are as good as Brandon’s rider chops. After a few frantic minutes, Brandon and the bike were back on the line, Holeshot managed to adjust his launch line a tad to the right, and all was good with the world.

Brandon, predictably, proceeded to just cruise around everyone on the track for yet a second time, and take home the class trophy.

I’ll go out on a limb here and predict this is someone you’re likely to see with a Grand National Expert Number as soon as he’s old enough for the regulations to permit it.

***

In Flat Track, it’s all about making and winning The Main. Today’s Main Event would pit Jeremy Higgins, a 23 year old freshly minted National Plate holder riding a 650 Kawasaki, against Dannny Koelsch, a 45 year old who had just come out of retirement, riding the traditional Harley XR.

Problem was, the Whistlepig had other ideas.

As the Expert Twins riders were released from staging onto the starting grid, a Teen-aged Groundhog — referred to in these parts as a Whistlepig — sprinted into the middle of the track, right in front of the start line.

From a tactical standpoint, this is not a good battle for a small mammal to pick.

As someone who should have two groundhog silhouettes painted on the fairing of my K-bike for kills — kills confirmed by my screaming passengers — I can tell you this does not end well.

So, with small giggles from the crowd slowly turning to hysterical laughter, we were treated to the entire course control staff being out-maneuvered by one very freaked out groundhog.

Richard Riley — working the PA and trying to fill the unplanned gap — related a tale of the DuQuoin mile, where a similar incident two years ago had resulted in the untimely demise of one racoon. A year later, the accused in that Racoon-icide had been presented with a Daniel Boone-style coonskin cap during the pre-race Riders’ Meeting.

I’m not aware of any method available to make stylish fashion accessories out of Groundhogs, so we were going to require another solution.

Under significant stress, the track control team had ganged up on the little feller, and had used sheer numbers to corral him. In victory, one of the corner workers — receiving a huge round of applause — carried the groundhog by the tail across the track and into the center of the infield.

The corner worker sat Whistles down in the grass — whereupon he sprinted, as fast as 3 inch long legs can go — right back toward the track.

Hysterical laughter ensued.

Fortunately, the Frederick Fairground’s primary purpose is to hold the fair for our still actively agricultural county every fall — replete with facilities to care for horses, cows, swine and every other farm animal under the sun.

While the corner team was replaying their Whistlepig Roundup Game, some thoughtful individual sprinted off to one of the nearby display barns to get a plastic horse watering tank. After much consternation, Whistles was recollected, and subjected to the minor indignity of being confined under the tank for the 5 minutes or so it would take to complete the main event.

With the Offender thus confined, it was time to race.

***

The main was kinda anticlimactic. Higgins got the holeshot and that was all she wrote. The suitability of the Ninja 650 Twin engine for flat track, right out of the box, is one of those surprises that keeps the sport interesting. An XR can be tuned to be faster, but it’s work where the Kawi is just gas-and-go. Koelsch, having made maximum effort in the heat, had come up with nothing left in the tank, and came in a fairly distant second.

***

After having not been to the Fritchie for more than a few years, I’m awfully glad I was there. The weather and conditions were perfect, the racing excellent, and the crowd, as always, was a people watcher’s feast. My thanks to Richard Riley and team for promoting and running a perfect event — one that really is the high point of every Fourth of July in Frederick Maryland. If you’re anywhere in the MidAtlantic region, don’t wait until the 100th to check it out.